Community-Led Death Care with Kelly Butler

Kelly Butler, based in Ottawa, Ontario, has lived in various parts of Canada and the U.S. She’s a mother of five and has worked in the realm of death and dying for 30 years, starting with hospice work in Atlanta, Georgia. For Kelly, the cycle of birth and death reflects life itself—beginnings and endings intertwined in a continuous flow. Her work has spanned decades, and she recently completed her master’s in health sciences.

Kelly is the founder of Community Deathcare Ottawa, a collective of practitioners and allies committed to family-led, community-based death care. The group’s mission is to shift death and dying from the medical system and funeral industry back into the hands of the community. This collective hosts events such as grief rituals, home funeral demonstrations, and educational talks on topics like natural burial. While the group doesn't provide direct care, they help connect individuals to the right resources within their community.

Her organization aims to inform the public about death, something society often avoids discussing. Members include death doulas, herbalists, and massage therapists, all bringing different skills to support people at the end of life. Kelly acknowledges the challenges of defining the role of a death doula, especially with varying levels of training and experience within the profession. She reflects on whether death doula work should be formalized or remain as a community-driven practice.

Kelly also teaches a mindfulness-informed end-of-life course, both as a practice of mindfulness and a contemplation of mortality. She emphasizes the importance of being present during death, noting that the body knows how to die, and it's essential to approach death with a sense of acceptance rather than fear. She likens this to facing climate change, noting that while we can't always change the outcome, we can choose how we navigate it—with presence, love, and acceptance.

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Transcript

[00:00:00] Kelly: It's worth considering that most contemplative traditions have within their teachings a practice of engaging with our own death. There is something in considering our own mortality, our own ending, that helps us be very present to what is in front of us right now. 

[00:00:16] Jill: Welcome back to Seeing Death Clearly.

[00:00:19] I'm your host, Jill McClennen, a death doula and end-of-life coach. Here on my show, I have conversations with guests. that explore the topics of death, dying, grief, and life itself. My goal is to create a space where you can challenge the ideas you might already have about these subjects. I want to encourage you to open your mind and consider perspectives beyond what you may currently believe to be true.

[00:00:42] In this episode, I sit down with Kelly Butler, the founder of Community Death Care Ottawa. who brings 30 years of experience in the death and dying field. We talk about her journey leading her to create a collective dedicated to returning death care to the community. Kelly shares the mission of her organization, which offers grief rituals, home funeral demonstrations, and natural burial education, all to empower families.

[00:01:08] We also dive into the evolving role of death doulas, the impact of mindfulness and end of life care, and how acceptance is key to navigating death and larger challenges like climate change. Thank you for joining us for this conversation. Welcome to the podcast, Kelly. Thank you so much for coming on. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself, even outside of the work that you do?

[00:01:30] Where are you from originally? Anything like that that you want to share? 

[00:01:34] Kelly: Thank you. It's great to be here, Jill. My name is Kelly Butler and I live in Ottawa, Ontario, and I have lived here for 20 years now, but I've lived in lots of different places in Canada and the U. S. I have five children and have worked in the realm of dying and death for 30 years.

[00:01:52] My first experience was working in hospice in Atlanta, Georgia. That has continued in the ensuing decades. I was thinking about this interview yesterday and the mirroring of birth and death and that, you know, like this is just really so much of what life is, this back and forth, this cycle of beginning and ending, beginning and ending.

[00:02:14] So that, that for me, encapsulates this work in a lot of ways. 

[00:02:18] Jill: Yeah, because it is a cycle and we're all going to go through it. If we're born, we're going to die one day. And that's okay. Right? I mean, it's one of those things that I know you and I probably both have a similar mission of just making it more normal and natural to talk about death and dying in a way that it's okay.

[00:02:38] We're all going to get there. So let's just relax a little bit about it, but prepare ourselves. That's the best way to feel okay when we get there. Can you tell me, so you started off in hospice. You have two different organizations now that you run. Like, what, what are you doing now? Tell me about that. 

[00:02:54] Kelly: I just finished my master's in health sciences and founded Community Death Care Ottawa some eight, nine years ago now.

[00:03:01] And so this is a collective of practitioners and allies, if I could use that term. People wanting family led care, community based care, who understand dying and death. As a natural and inevitable process and won't want to be present to it in a way that is meaningful and has an opportunity for maybe being expansive like there's a deepening of our humanness when we can be present to this versus outsourcing it.

[00:03:29] Versus outsourcing death to the medical system, to the funeral industry, those are some pretty big concepts in describing our group. We try to do a lot of education and advocacy as a collective. Individual members, some of them are death dualists, some of them are herbalists, some do palliative care massage.

[00:03:46] It's all different skills that are brought to the the time of dying and end to death. As a group, we host events like grief rituals, home funeral demonstrations. We did a labyrinth walk last October. We recently hosted a talk on natural burial and different groups working on this and why it's important.

[00:04:09] A lot of our effort is geared towards educating and informing the public. about these things because we don't talk about it enough. There are several members who host grief cafes pretty regularly or death cafes. This idea of let's open up the conversation. 

[00:04:24] Jill: We need to have the conversation. We can't avoid it.

[00:04:27] And so how many practitioners did you say you have there? 

[00:04:30] Kelly: As a group, I'd say there's 60 to 70 people that are part of the group, but there's probably a dozen actively doing this work, some distinction in that regard. Our definition is broad in terms of who's a member and what does it mean to be part of community death care, which, which I think is appropriate.

[00:04:47] I know that. In recent years, there's been the burgeoning movement around becoming a death doula. And I appreciate the interest and attention. I know this is some of the work you do. I have my background's nursing, so it's something I'm familiar with. But one of the things that my hope and my aim is that we come to understand death doula not as a specialized skill.

[00:05:09] This is something we do for each other. It's part of our humanness. That we care for each other in our time of dying, across the lifespan. It isn't some esoteric, specialized thing. You just need to show up. 

[00:05:22] Jill: When you work in your community, like say if I lived near you and I realized that I was dying and I contacted you.

[00:05:31] Your group, like how does that work? Is that something people pay for the services or how do you run it? I guess is the words that I'm looking for. Umbrella group 

[00:05:39] Kelly: itself isn't providing care directly. If somebody contacts us looking for supportive end of life, I will direct them to the people we know within the group, within the community, and then they sort that out on their own.

[00:05:51] So many, many people are doing this for pay. There are some people that. regard this as more of a vocation and something that they're, it's kind of more of a volunteer role that they'll provide care in that way. It depends on who you're speaking with. That's not part of what we're trying to do. We want to point people towards resources.

[00:06:11] That's part of our aim. 

[00:06:12] Jill: Yeah. Cause I know 

[00:06:13] Kelly: it's 

[00:06:13] Jill: hard. We need to make money. Like that's just the reality, but it is definitely that end of life work. I am finding more and more the longer that I'm doing this. It's almost even hard to charge for it, because it's like, what are you even charging for? I don't like charging by the hour, trying to figure out how to charge for a package.

[00:06:35] I just want to be able to show up and support people. So trying to figure out how to do that by maybe getting paid to teach classes about different things at the library, whatever it is. I'm working for a couple different places that are local to me now. I'll teach a class and get paid for it. But the work itself is so community based and in the moment, people will just reach out to me.

[00:07:01] And it's like, I just need help right now for a few minutes because I don't know what I'm doing and I don't know where to turn. And yeah, so it is, it's, it's tricky. And, you know, as a death doula, I am trying to figure out what that even means. Like, what does that mean? And how do I do this work? Ideally, it is about.

[00:07:18] Going into my community, talking about it and helping other people get more comfortable so that they don't actually need me, that they can just kind of do this on their own, get back to that idea of taking care of our people, but It's also hard because society doesn't set us up well for that. We have to work, we have to make money.

[00:07:39] Even for me now, I have to take my mom to a couple different doctor's appointments. She's not that old, but like, she is aging. Trying to fit that into my day, and trying to schedule meetings and things all around it, and then, you know, You know, like it's hard. You can't just easily be like, oh, okay, I'm going to take care of my aging parent as they near the end of life because your life has to change so much.

[00:08:00] We have a ways to go culturally before we'll get there, 

[00:08:04] Kelly: but we're 

[00:08:04] Jill: trying. 

[00:08:05] Kelly: There's a real conundrum, a contradiction that we're dealing with. I have not found a solution yet, but this work is largely done by women. We can see the landscape and it is mostly women doing this work and we undervalue women's labor.

[00:08:18] So there is this structural. inequality that exists. We do the same thing around mothering. Like, it's sacred work, so it's beyond pay. And there's some truth to that. This is something that kind of exists in a liminal space. To your point, how do you even charge for this? There's a real wrestling that's going on with how do we both honor that women's labor has value and is worth compensation.

[00:08:46] At the same time, understanding that this is a community making, culture building experience that we're going through and adding capitalism into the mix, it feels like the wrong space for it. So it's, it is tricky. And within our group, we wrestle with this quite a bit. How do you monetize something that is deeply of service to our fellow humans?

[00:09:12] It's tough. 

[00:09:13] Jill: I wish in some ways that we could get back to people just willingly being like, I'm going to give you something, right? I value your time. I'm going to give you money or barter or trade for the services. That's part of the bigger picture is. We just, we don't do that very much. So like you said, especially with women, especially with women of color, the deeper you get into all of that, there's this lack of valuing people's time.

[00:09:44] And it's frustrating. It's a frustrating thing. I'm lucky because I don't have to worry so much right now. Eventually I might have to go back to working a full time job. And then if I do that, I don't have the time or the energy. To do this work. 

[00:09:59] Kelly: Right, right. 

[00:10:00] Jill: I guess we'll figure it out as we go, but it is a interesting time.

[00:10:05] I think that we're existing in as humans for a lot of different reasons. 

[00:10:10] Kelly: One difference between Canada and the US is that in the US hospices are hiring death doulas and they have been death are largely unwell in Canadian hospice. I'm curious to understand more why that is. I don't know if it's because of privatized medicine in the us.

[00:10:27] That creates some of the difference, but I do think that the death doula movement will take root more readily in the U. S. because there are employment opportunities that don't exist here. 

[00:10:38] Jill: In my experience, hospices are not welcoming to death doulas, even in the U. S. Hospice News recently put out an article where they were like, hiring death doulas, it's like the new thing.

[00:10:49] But personally, I haven't found a single death doula that's ever been welcomed by hospice. I'm kind of in that same boat of, I'm not sure exactly why not. I've talked to hospice nurses and people all over the place, but even locally, I've tried talking with a few different hospices, and it's very much like, well, we don't we don't Even as volunteers, we don't take death doulas.

[00:11:13] We don't use death doulas. We do what you do already. We don't need that. And I'm like, well, yeah, but also no. I found in hospitals, at least I've been volunteering and I've been working a little bit with palliative care teams. The hospital I volunteer with, I've been working with the hospice when they need an extra person and they've been very welcoming because I was already there.

[00:11:36] It was like, Hey, I'm here. I could sit with this person who's dying because I know you need to go somewhere else. They were very much like, that would be amazing. Why don't you sit? But as far as getting paid, it's definitely not anything that I've seen. And I don't know if hospices will get there, but honestly, I don't know.

[00:11:55] The more that I've learned about Hospice as a business, right? I love hospice as the service that they provide. But the more that I've talked to people that have worked in hospice, and I don't know if I would honestly even want to work for pay for hospice, because it just seems like there's a lot of I don't know.

[00:12:16] Red tape and things that can make it really tricky. I've talked to people that were like, I couldn't do it anymore. I had to leave, you know, whether it was a hospice chaplain, one was a massage therapist that worked in hospice. And, you know, then again, I don't know. Like, maybe. Maybe we'll get there. But I think some of it is because in the United States, everything is about the insurance and who's going to get paid and how are people going to get paid.

[00:12:41] Even though hospice can be provided, quote unquote, for free because of Medicaid or Medicare, depending, I guess, on what people need. Um, it's still tricky. I feel like anytime we get money involved, it makes it so much harder. We'll see where it goes. This movement is It's pretty new as far as a business model.

[00:13:03] Most of the people that contact me, whether it's like through my website or online, they're not contacting me because they want to use my services. They want to become a desk doula and they want to know more about it. That's great. It's amazing. We could use more people. That'll go out into their communities.

[00:13:21] My first question is, are you trying to make a business out of this? Or do you just want to do it because you want to provide the service to your community? Because right now, it's not really financially stable. 

[00:13:31] Kelly: But eventually, hopefully, it will be. You said there's too much red tape with hospice in the U.

[00:13:35] S. Do you mean in the sense of, the care that you can provide, or is it just interacting with hospice? And it's a lot of administrative bureaucracy. 

[00:13:44] Jill: Seems like from what I've heard by talking to other people, a lot of it is the bureaucracy of it all. The lack of being able to provide the services because they have to spread themselves thin, all the paperwork they need to do, which I understand we need to do those things, but it ended up making things hard.

[00:14:04] And plus like one person was saying too, that The chaplains, the death doulas, the massage therapists, they're always going to be the ones that are going to get cut first when budgets get tight. And, you know, hospice relies on, they have to have a certain amount of volunteer hours. They want to bring in volunteers to do a lot of these things and not necessarily pay people.

[00:14:27] So again, that's. the little bit that I've gotten from talking to people across different hospices, different states, basically in the United States. I 

[00:14:37] Kelly: mean, 

[00:14:39] Jill: yeah, 

[00:14:39] Kelly: we'll figure it out as we go. Yeah. Well, and we're in the growing pains of the movement. I appreciate to some degree, The reluctance that hospice has for bringing in death doula is because what exactly is a death doula?

[00:14:53] Much like this tension or contradiction between women's labor being undervalued but also do we really want to commodify death care? A similar issue I find myself struggling with is, do we want death doulas to be a regulated profession? Do we want it to be something where you can register your credentials and be acknowledged as having a certain expertise?

[00:15:19] Because that is one model. Or do we want this? This is just what I do for my neighbor. This is the thing that we know how to do, which is to care for each other. And You know, I prefer the latter, this is just the thing that we do, but I recognize some of the trouble in that is that you have people that they're death doulas and they took a weekend training.

[00:15:38] You have people that are death doulas and I took a two year long program. So it's a real mix. I have encountered people that have taken the weekend training and they're certified men by whatever. person or organization they studied with, and they've never been around a person who's dying. I can see how this is really problematic for an organization in terms of vetting.

[00:16:00] You are being given a quote unquote certification, but what does that actually mean? And, and we haven't collectively decided yet what exactly is the skill set. My feeling about it is a lot of the work that needs to be done is the, the self reflection around what are my views? How am I in the face of endings?

[00:16:23] How do I stay grounded? And and that's not necessarily like a checklist that you can go through to say, Oh yeah, I have competency in this area. 

[00:16:31] Jill: Yeah. And that is a great point where I don't know if I would want it to be as standardized either. Yeah. Yeah. Because part of why I like to do this work is I get to figure out what works for me and what doesn't work for me and what I'm good at doing with clients versus maybe not as good.

[00:16:54] I'll do paperwork with people. I know there's some death doulas that it's all about the paperwork. I'll do it. I don't love it. I'm finding. I really like working in a hospital with a variety of people. I'll see three or four people in a day. Some are actively dying. I just sit. Some are, you know, I just got my diagnosis, but they're also saying there's not much that can be done.

[00:17:19] It's a wide spectrum of ages and degrees of illnesses. I really like that. I don't know if I really like working with individuals that are on hospice and they're nearing death and they're at home and I go into their house and I visit. Like, I don't know if I really like that. I've done it a few times. I really prefer a hospital setting.

[00:17:40] So there is some of that, like figuring it out, what each doula is good at and what they want to do. And, and with all the different trainings, it's really hard because it's, I'd had business coaches and they're like, just treat people to be a decimal. That's how you'll make money. And I'm like, I don't feel comfortable doing that.

[00:17:57] I don't have enough experience. I'm learning, you know, and the more experiences I have. And I didn't come from any type of nursing or medical background. I came from food service. So other than my grandmother, I hadn't been around people that were dying either because I didn't have the opportunity. And then trying to get the opportunity, it took me years to be able to even get a hospital to allow me to come in and volunteer.

[00:18:23] So it is, it's really hard. It's really tricky. And I definitely can understand why hospice is hesitant. I guess I just didn't expect such, um, It's not even just hesitant sometimes. It's almost like, how dare you even ask us that kind of attitude? I was just asking if you take volunteers. I didn't even ask to be a death doula volunteer.

[00:18:45] I just said I'm a death doula and I want to volunteer. I guess I just didn't expect the harsh kind of attitude about death doulas from hospice. But I can understand the hesitancy because you're right, there is such a broad spectrum now, especially of trainings. The one that I did at first was just an online course, but I had no personal interaction.

[00:19:06] I read, I took tests, but that was it. Then I got a mentor who had been in hospice for a long time. I did a six month mentorship with her. So I had more of that one on one. It is nowadays you can just have a weekend long like, all right, now I'm a death doula. Similar to two is. You can be really good at a job, but that doesn't mean you're good at running a business either.

[00:19:28] And so, you know, that's the hard part is that if there's going to be organizations that will hire death doulas, then that makes sense for some people. But at this point, unless you want to run your own business and unless you're good at organizing and all the stuff that goes into business, it's really hard.

[00:19:49] And even when you're good at it, my husband and I owned. Multiple businesses before this. It's still really hard. A friend of mine, every time I'm like, you know, I feel when people say to me, well, how's everything going? How's your business? I feel like they want to know, like, are you making money? To me, my business is successful.

[00:20:06] I have my podcast, I'm volunteering at two hospitals. I go out into my community all the time. I'm doing CE classes. Like, you know, I'm working with a law office. I feel like I'm really successful, but my paycheck says otherwise, right? I do other things. I teach serve, save, steal, tarot cards. Like I do all kinds of stuff to bring in a little bit of income.

[00:20:27] But then every time, you know, I talk to one of my friends, he'll say, you have to understand that you started a business around the one thing people want to avoid at all costs, talking about death. I was like, well, I didn't expect to be a millionaire, but I thought I could at least make a living wage off of it.

[00:20:42] But again, we'll see. 

[00:20:44] Kelly: Yeah, that's definitely one of the, if not the greatest challenge for people that want to do this for work. You can't really make a living at it. 

[00:20:52] Jill: Which. You know, again, money's not everything, but we do need to pay our bills, and we need to feed ourselves, and until we can figure out how to take care of each other as a community, we will have to do something to make money.

[00:21:04] Kelly: So what do you do now? Are you still a nurse? No, I'm not nursing. I haven't done that in ages. I am actually about to return. I've also worked in funeral homes and I'm planning to return to that in the coming month, part time, largely because there are, I'm also teaching and similar to you, there's a lot of different ways that I'm approaching this.

[00:21:26] We talk about dying and death, but these are very different things. They're obviously very related, but there's something I find very, satisfying. It's a real privilege to work with families that have experienced loss. It's been probably four or five years since I've done that, but I'm looking forward to returning to that.

[00:21:43] I teach a Mindful Informed End of Life program with University of Toronto in their Continuing Studies program. Through our organization, we do workshops day long or afternoons, that kind of thing. A lot. Part of my work is being with people, supporting people, not necessarily in their dying, but all of the things that surround that, whether it's in anticipation of or because it's occurred and we're trying to navigate this new reality.

[00:22:10] So that's kind of what's happening right now. 

[00:22:12] Jill: Yeah. And I guess that's what it was. It was the mindful class that you teach, mindful dying. I practice meditation, you know, I'm big on mindfulness in general. Cool. I was never afraid of dying. I was never afraid of my own death, but I definitely had fears of my children dying, my husband dying, having my death doula training, and just also reading a lot on my own.

[00:22:38] I bought any and every book I could buy on thrift books. I was like, I want all the books about death and dying and grief, right? So I started to read. And a lot of the stories were people talking about their children dying or their spouse dying and it's like, oh, there's some stuff going on there. I'm feeling very uncomfortable right now with this.

[00:22:59] I had to work through it on my own, work through my feelings and figure out again. I might not be okay working with children that are. Sick and dying, I could probably deal with other things, but not that that just is not going to be a place where I'm comfortable going yet, maybe eventually, but the more I got okay with it all, the more that, you know, I've been practicing meditation now for 20 years.

[00:23:26] At least. And this was the one thing that got me to actually be really present. This was the one thing that really finally got me to a place where I was like, Oh, this is it. This is all I have is right now is this moment. It could be gone tomorrow. My children could be gone. My husband could be gone. I could be gone.

[00:23:45] All I have is this moment. And I found that it was Probably the best meditation practice that I could have was being okay with death and dying. I went through this morning quickly and reread and I was like, Ooh, mindfulness. I want to know about that. So yeah. Can you tell me what you teach, how you teach it, how you got into teaching it?

[00:24:06] I want to know all about it. 

[00:24:07] Kelly: The particular course that I'm. Teaching that relates to this topic is mindfulness informed end of life. It's a series of modules that used to be taught in person and are now being taught online. It's both teaching the practice of mindfulness, but it's also a contemplation of end of life.

[00:24:25] And I, and I think it's worth considering that most contemplative traditions have. Within their teachings, a practice of engaging with our own death. There is something in considering our own mortality, our own ending, that helps us be very present to what is in front of us right now. I sometimes speak to people similar to you.

[00:24:44] When people contact community death care, it's. Often it's sort of a 50 50 mix. Sometimes it's looking for services. And then half of the folks are, they want to become a desk doula or they've just finished a course and they want to know, how can I get work? I often steer people towards this kind of program because as I said earlier, being skillful and comfortable in that space, isn't some checklist of, do they need water?

[00:25:10] Do they need their pillow fluff? They, you know, like those are, those are still important things and are, we have material needs, but. But what is more helpful is that ability to pause and to respond rather than reacting, because this is a very charged space. Even if we're comfortable with the idea of endings and that we will die, it can still be a fraught place.

[00:25:34] I don't subscribe to the idea that we need to be okay with it. You cannot be okay and you're still going to die. So there's no insistence on you need to arrive in this equanimity that, oh, you know, so you have families that are perhaps in a reactive state. You have the person themselves. And if your own internal landscape is one of turmoil, one of reactivity, you're less able to be present to the person you're ostensibly in service to.

[00:26:02] So the mindfulness for me is a way of being able to slow down enough to notice, okay, what is coming up for me? What am I feeling? What thoughts are arising? And then to be able to respond skillfully. It's a life skill though. It's not just for, you know, I think it's a great thing for anybody to take on because it helps us in our own experience.

[00:26:26] I think a lot about why this is so important in the face of climate change. I had a friend recently ask, we were talking about climate change and he said, well, do you have the expectation that doing this work is going to change things? You know, meaning can we write this ship? Do you think that we can avoid what's coming?

[00:26:43] And I said, no, I don't think it changes anything except it changes how we get there. That mirrors, again, our dying. That, you know, would you do this work if you knew that the situation was terminal? If you're asking that question about climate change, well, whether it's the macro or the micro, the answer is the same.

[00:27:00] The situation is terminal. We are going to die. And doing this work isn't to avoid that outcome. Doing this work is so that we can be fully present and grounded. to the fact that this is what's happening. You know, the body knows how to die. We don't need to be taught how to do this. It isn't actually a medical event.

[00:27:20] There can be medical interventions for a particular disease that's unfolding, but the dying itself is something the body knows how to do. What do we need to know? I think it's very helpful. The thing that our particular society is lacking in. You know, we're oriented towards functionalism, towards productivity, towards efficiency.

[00:27:39] We've already talked about how capitalism has seeped into death care. Um, and, and the ways in which that just feels off for us, we are potentially bringing the wrong values, the wrong mindset to this process, to this experience, and mindfulness allows that as well, to step back and consider. Well, why do I believe this?

[00:28:02] What is giving me this idea or belief about what's happening or what should happen? To me, mindfulness is developing the skill to slow down enough to recognize what's happening. 

[00:28:15] Jill: I like that. It's a really nice way of putting it because it's not about changing what's happening. It's just being able to slow down and witness it and be with it.

[00:28:27] I like that. The connection to climate change, because I mean, I don't know how old your children are, but my children, they're pretty young still, you know, 10 and 13. And I worry, I know worrying isn't going to do anything. But I do worry what life is going to be like for them between climate change and just, you know, I don't know, wars, like all this stuff.

[00:28:49] I guess probably every generation does worry about these things. We're always going to worry about what we're leaving for our children with climate change especially. I grew up in the 80s when it was very much like, you know, kind of taught in schools. There was like all the different booklets and stuff you'd get about turning off the water when you brushed your teeth and reduce, reuse, recycle.

[00:29:11] It was very much a part of my life to the point where. I almost get anxiety if I hear water running and I feel like it's being wasted. If I was like seeing, you know, recycles getting mixed in with the trash, like I would get so anxious about it. And then I just had to be mindful and let it go. Right. I can't change it all.

[00:29:31] I can't fix it all. But I've been known to walk around kitchens and just turn off running water. And they'd be like, why are you shutting off my water? And I'm like, why is it running? It should not be running. I heard somebody talk once about the term for it that I can't remember that I'm sure I'll remember later on, but about reef.

[00:29:48] What's it called? Solastasia. Oh, I've never heard that one. What's that? 

[00:29:53] Kelly: Well, I thought that's maybe the word that you were going for. It's the grief we experience related to climate change. 

[00:30:00] Jill: Well, yeah, because that's what I was going to say. It's like grief related to climate change, but I haven't heard of that word.

[00:30:06] That's a good one. I like it. Yeah. 

[00:30:08] Kelly: Like nostalgia, you know, a longing for the past. You can hear the root is the same. 

[00:30:13] Jill: Interesting. See, now I've got a new word I'm going to look up because I like it. When it's hard too, because sometimes living in New Jersey, we do have four seasons, which is part of what I love about it, right?

[00:30:26] Right now we're in spring. It's beautiful and all my flowers are blooming. Our winters have been more mild, which I kind of like because I don't like cold. I don't like snow. I know that it's needed, but part of me is like, I don't really mind more mild winters. I think there's that part of me that remembers.

[00:30:47] My grandmother, she was born in 1916, right? So like, not that long ago. And she talks about how the lakes used to freeze so much in the winter that they would get blocks of ice out of the lakes and they would take them to their ice house. I haven't seen a frozen lake since I was a kid. We used to go ice skating on them.

[00:31:08] You know, they still weren't frozen enough that you could get blocks of ice out of them, but we would be able to go ice skating on them. And now we don't get frozen lakes. Or when we do, we get so much snow all at once that it's overwhelming. That's the hard part too, is, you know, I've talked to people that they're like, global warming, but we've had the coldest winter on record.

[00:31:26] And I'm Yeah. That's why they don't really call it global warming anymore. They're calling it global climate change because overall we are still warming, but it's gonna just cause we've had tornadoes in New Jersey, which we've never had. Right? Like there's a lot of stuff that I'm definitely like, I don't know.

[00:31:44] I can't worry about it because I can't fix that problem. I still do my desk. I still shut the water off when I brush my teeth and I still recycle. I do what I can. But, yeah, I don't know. Are we past the point of return? Are we past the point where we can even make any changes? I don't know. And it upsets me.

[00:32:05] Kelly: It's worth being upset about. It's something that I think it, it absolutely parallels the dying of the individual. That we are in the midst of what is a collapse. of sorts, you know, that I agree. I mean, global warming isn't used anymore. Even climate change isn't really, doesn't capture what's happening because it's causing chaos.

[00:32:23] I also don't mind a milder winter, but to understand, well, what are all the implications? What are the consequences that come out of this? The winter. The cold weather is really important for our part of the world. Those cold winters are really important for killing off, you know, pests that affect particular trees or plants.

[00:32:44] You know, even, even the freezing of the lakes, there's something fish have evolved over, aquatic life has evolved over the millennia to have. the temperature response that's happening around reproduction. We see that in the natural world in general. So you have fruit trees that will bud because it's a super mild, early, you know, it's a beautiful, warm March.

[00:33:07] And then we go back into a deep freeze and it kills off what has started to grow too early, which is to say, I think we are witnessing a lot of things that could live in this environment and in our collective memory have always been here, are not going to survive these new weather patterns. They need the cold or a certain number of warm days in the summer.

[00:33:30] We'll have new species moving in that the existing Life doesn't have resistance to their new threats coming in. So all of these things are happening to your point of trying not to worry. What if we cannot change it, what are we supposed to do? I think the answer is that we love these things as best we can.

[00:33:51] If the monarch butterfly isn't going to survive, if the honeybee is going to be wiped out, if these things are not going to survive, What should we do? And loving deeply, appreciation and gratitude. If we are cultivating that, and this is what we should bring to the dead side as well. We're not trying to change what is inevitable, but we're trying to be present to it in a way that's in service, the way that is a comfort and is still a yes for life.

[00:34:25] In the sense that we're not turning away. We are loving this experience of being alive from beginning to end and not turning away when it gets to the hard part. 

[00:34:36] Jill: That is so beautiful. I love it. And we are almost at our time to stop recording. But I do want to give you a couple minutes. I know you said that your class nail is online.

[00:34:47] Can anybody take it? No 

[00:34:49] Kelly: matter where they are? Sure. If you go to the School of Continuing Studies at the University of Toronto, they have all sorts of mindfulness courses. There is the Mindful Informed End of Life program that I teach in. I also teach in the Foundations. You can take Mindfulness for Teaching, Mindfulness for Art, all kinds of different things.

[00:35:08] And it's the Applied Mindfulness Meditation program. It's really excellent. You know, a lot of different things. And I think it's most, I think almost everything is still online. I don't know if that will change over time, but it's, it's absolutely for the public and, you know, can be a really wonderful way of.

[00:35:30] Being present to your own life. Within community death care, people often say, Oh my god, this just must be so depressing. The secret for those of us doing this work is that engaging in dying and death is a recipe for more joy. It's a way to be. Appreciative and delighted by the experience of being alive.

[00:35:49] The Mindfulness Program is in the same vein. What am I going to get out of it? You're going to deepen into appreciation for your own growth. It isn't narrowly like a skill for your work or your hobby. It's a way of being. 

[00:36:01] Jill: Yes, I agree. I will put a link in the show notes to the website so people can easily find it.

[00:36:09] If anybody wants to reach out to you, is there a way to reach you? Do you have an email or a website you would want to share? 

[00:36:15] Kelly: Yeah, I would send people to CommunityDeathCareOttawa. com. If you email us, you'll get me or my colleague, Heather Martell, but you'll also see I've got a profile on that site as well.

[00:36:28] So that's probably the best way to get ahold of me. Wonderful. 

[00:36:32] Jill: And I will share all of those links. Thank you so much, Kelly. This was really interesting. I love having the conversation because it goes all over the place. I didn't expect to talk about climate change, but it's something I'm interested in. So thank you.

[00:36:45] Kelly: Thank you, Jill. This was really a delight. I thoroughly enjoyed chatting with 

[00:36:49] Jill: you. In my next episode, I spoke with Dr. Bob Uslander. Founder of Empowered Endings in San Diego, Dr. Euslander and his wife, Elizabeth, lead a compassionate team dedicated to providing personalized end of life care for people.

[00:37:06] Their practice offers a holistic approach, ensuring families receive the support they need. Dr. Euslander shared his transition from emergency medicine to discovering the beauty of supporting patients through the end of life process. We discussed his advocacy for palliative care. Hospice care and medical aid in dying, along with his efforts to educate healthcare professionals and the public on these topics.

[00:37:32] Dr. Uslander's passion for creating gentle, peaceful transitions for his patients is truly inspiring. And I hope you tune in next week to hear his insights. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with a friend or family member who might find it interesting. Your support in spreading the podcast is greatly appreciated.

[00:37:50] Please consider subscribing on your favorite podcast platform and leaving a five star review. Your positive feedback helps recommend the podcast to others. The podcast also offers a paid subscription feature that allows you to financially support the show. Your contribution will help keep the podcast advertisement free.

[00:38:07] Whether your donation is large or small, Every amount is valuable. I sincerely appreciate all of you for listening to the show and supporting me in any way you can. You can find a link in the show notes to subscribe to the paid monthly subscription, as well as a link to my Venmo, if you prefer to make a one time contribution.

[00:38:23] Thank you. And I look forward to seeing you in next week's episode of seeing death clearly.